Character Actor Appreciation: Jessie Royce Landis

(The first in an occasional series.)

I've talked about my love for more mainstream performers, from Katharine Hepburn to Jack Lemmon here. They're obviously great and I thought it might be nice to give the lesser-known, bit players some recognition. (I'm now at the point where I've watched so many movies that I recognize Edward Everett Horton or Leo G. Carroll as soon as they come onscreen.) One of my favorites is Jessie Royce Landis. Like many character actors of the time, she was always relegated to the same role, but damn if she didn't play said role to the hilt. Her speciality was the out-of-touch, somewhat overbearing upper-class mother with a minor in alcoholism. On her imdb page, they refer to her characters as bluebloods, but there was an acquisitiveness and crassness to her that screamed "nouvelle riche" to me. As for trademarks, there's the flaming red hair, the cigarettes, the husky drawl, and the allusions to drinking and gambling. In North by Northwest, she plays Cary Grant's clingy mother, who is oblivious to the elaborate scheme he is caught up in. Hitchcock understood that a thriller with lots of action needed to be balanced out with some comedic bits, like Grant's hilarious drunken testimony in front of a country judge. Landis's petty concerns and "typical mom" behavior throw Grant's paranoia into relief. To Catch a Thief found her reteaming with Hitchcock and Grant, this time playing Grace Kelly's overbearing mom. However, this time she's anything but suffocating, instead encouraging her daughter to be less stuck up. "Sorry I ever sent her to finishing school," she apologizes to Grant early on in the film. "I think they finished her there."

In another of my all-time favorite films, Gregory LaCava's My Man Godfrey, Landis plays -- guess what? An overbearing, rich mother figure -- this time, one with a penchant for adopting strange artists and musicians into the family in a misguided attempt to be a patroness of the arts. Again, Landis is wryly funny, whether exchanging hangover tips with William Powell or scolding her socialite daughters (Carole Lombard and Martha Hyer.) I've only seen her in those three films, since she mostly worked in TV, but I'm planning to check her out in The Swan. Yes, I know it's supposed to be bad, but with her, Grace Kelly and Louis Jourdan, it can't be that bad, right?

Also, she had an awesome autobiography title: "You Won't Be So Pretty (But You'll Know More)," which presumably refers to aging.

I appreciate that today's bit players are generally allowed a bit of freedom, sometimes even nabbing the starring role, like Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote or David Strathairn in Good Night and Good Luck. While it may have been frustrating for Landis to never break out, she embraced the character actor rut and made a memorable impression nonetheless.